The importance of self-care

   

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Therapy is hard work. It takes a lot out of you to spend extended periods of time focusing on the most difficult aspects of your life on a regular basis. It’s not hard to burn out while working on particularly intense issues. This is why self-care is essential to recovery. You need to make sure you are in the best place possible in order to move forward in your treatment. 

Self-care is maintaining your health and general well-being. It can take many forms and will be specific to each individual. What matters is that the activity promotes your welfare. If taking a walk in nature makes you feel better, do it. If self-care means the occasional binge-marathon on Netflix, that’s okay, too. There is no right or wrong way to engage in self-care; the only thing that matters is that it works for you.

While you might think that self-care for mental health is only about taking care of your mind, that is not true at all. Taking care of your body is essential, too. Physical health and mental health are very interconnected, so what’s good for one is good for the other. Make sure to exercise, eat healthy foods and get plenty of sleep. Follow your treatment regimens for any physical illnesses you have. 

Make a list of self-care activities so that when you are feeling exhausted, you don’t have to try to come up with something. Keep it on your phone, in your purse, on your refrigerator – wherever you have easy access to it. Make an effort to do something on the list every day. Try new activities, too. You never know when you’ll discover something helpful. 

By regularly practicing self-care, you can avoid future mental health crises. Taking care of yourself as stressors come up means that you won’t have a reservoir of unresolved emotions that flood you all at once when the buildup is too strong. If you are having trouble coming up with self-care ideas, you can talk to your therapist. Together you can come up with a plan for how to take care of you both daily and when a stressor comes up.

Do you practice self-care? How has it helped you? Tell us in the comments.